M D Nalapat
The
Obama administration has largely reverted to the Clinton presidency’s
policy of looking at India as a lesser power, although unlike Clinton,
who began mouthing praise on Delhi only when US business interests in
the country reached critical mass, Barack Obama has been generous with
“wampum”, showering sugary words and making insubstantial gestures, even
while it seeks to lock India into a dependent relationship now that
Pakistan is drifting apart from Washington and moving into Beijing’s
orbit. In the nuclear field, the Obama administration is insisting on
conditions that collectively negate the Singh-Bush nuclear accord, in
effect continuing to force India off the path of nuclear capability. In
Space, although a few token gestures have been made, none of these has
been followed up by any intensification of cooperation between NASA and
the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The grip of the
Europeanist world view is too strong for President Obama to acknowledge
that India is at least the equal of France, Britain or Germany, and
needs to be so treated. Instead, the policymakers in the DC Beltway are
still at work using their many friends in the Sonia Gandhi-led coalition
to lock India into a one-sided relationship that would severely affect
this country’s prospects for future growth and technological autonomy
and excellence.
That the Sonia Gandhi-led administration ( for let us face reality, rather than cling to the legal fiction that any minister other than - perhaps - himself sees Manmohan Singh as the boss) is uninterested in going the China route of technological self-sufficiency has been once again illustrated by the decision to award the 126-aircraft contract to the French or to a French-led consortium. A senior Indian politician, who seems to have been given information from a rival country’s sources once it was clear that France was in the driver’s seat on what is expected to balloon into a $18 billion contract, has publicly accused France’s First Lady Carla Bruni of having intervened with Italian-born Sonia Gandhi in order to ensure that the contract went to Paris in one form or the other, something that has now happened. For more than a year, reports have been swirling around Raisina Road that “Number Ten” ( the 10 Janpath residence of the all-powerful UPA chairperson, who was born in Orbassano in Italy but has made India her home for four decades) was in favour of the French option, although such reports were not accompanied by any proof. It may be that Sonia Gandhi is simply being made the target of a smear campaign, so hopefully both she as well as Bruni will clarify the nature of their contacts and discussions before gossip spreads about the relationship that she shares with the Maino family, who are frequent visitors to India. Of course, given the timidity of the Indian media on all negative matters relating to Sonia Gandhi, the allegation made by Dr Swamy, the Indian politician close to both China and the US, has gone almost totally unreported.
